Image courtesy of the Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Greater Boston residents are expected to continue to decrease their spending on home remodeling during the rest of 2019, according to a new study from Harvard University, despite high home prices that prevent some from trading up.

Spending is projected to grow by 2 percent this quarter, 3 percent in the third quarter and then hold steady in the fourth quarter.

Homeowners increased their spend by a mere 2 percent in each of the last three quarters, the report found, after increasing 8 percent and 6 percent in the last quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of 2018, respectively.

Annual gains in homeowner spending on improvements are expected to moderate across more than half of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas in 2019, according to the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

While no major metros are projected to see spending levels decline in 2019, the center’s model indicates that the pace of spending by homeowners will slow in 29 of the 49 major metros tracked relative to their estimated 2018 gains. Annual growth in improvement expenditures is projected to fall to the lowest rate in three years in nearly half (22) of these metros.

“Metros with cooling home prices and sales activity are not able to sustain the same pace of investment in home improvements as in recent years,” Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies, said in a statement. “Our projections show especially pronounced slowing in markets such as San Antonio, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Dallas.”

The Remodeling Futures Program, initiated by the Joint Center for Housing Studies in 1995, is a comprehensive study of the factors influencing the growth and changing characteristics of housing renovation and repair activity in the United States. The program seeks to produce a better understanding of the home improvement industry and its relationship to the broader residential construction industry.